Community Theatre is Failing Women

I have grown decidedly more Feminist in my thinking over the years which has made enjoying theatre harder to enjoy lately. There are, of course, excellent shows with diverse and interesting female casts but more often then not, the female characters are flat and uninteresting. It seems like Theatre show creators, performers, and viewers are often more liberal than the average community of people but strangely, despite this, sexism is still rampant. Something I often think about when viewing TV shows and Movies is whether or not what I am viewing would pass the Bechdel Test.


The Bechdel Test, for those who are not familiar, was created by Alison Bechdel in her 1985 comic, “Dykes to Watch Out For” and has become a well-known measurement of gender bias in movies.
Basically to pass the test the movie must have three things:

1. Two female characters (preferably named),
2. Who talk to each other,
3. About something other than a man.

When I first learned about this test I wasn't overly surprised that a lot of movies failed this very basic test. Disappointed...but not surprised. I do feel that movies and TV have come a bit of a ways forward in their portrayal of women over the years and that services like Netflix has taken us even further by releasing shows with strong, interesting women and more diversity in general.

The Bechdel Test is important because it helps start dialogue about not only the lack of females in theatre shows, but also the racial disparities which are also common. Theatre, unlike movies, have a variety of female characters the problem is they typically are not substantial, especially compared to the male characters. The women are often portrayed as one-dimensional and male-dependent. They are “damsels in distress,” desperate to be saved by a strong handsome man.


Since theatre is dialogue heavy and typically character driven, more theatre shows would pass this basic test but often these characters are predictable and uninteresting. I find this to be especially true of musical theatre. Just last night I saw Front Row Centre's Production of How to Succeed at Business Without Really Trying and though it was a good show, I found myself annoyed at how docile and desperate the female lead was to win the heart of the male lead. She even sang a silly song about how she's love to stay at home and wear wifely outfits and keep his dinner warm since he'll be late from his job. Nothing wrong with any of that if that's your thing, but it would be nice to see more multi-faceted interests from female characters. So this show has more than two female characters with names and they do talk to each other but unfortunately only about men, so this show fails the Bechdel test. This test is certainly not perfect. The last show I saw (Soliciting Temptation by Sage Theatre) had a very interesting and layered female lead but would still fail as there was only one female character. Of course there was only one male character as well so the test does not accurately determine  whether or not that show could be called feminist.


I'm going to keep seeing shows and rating them on how feminist they are and hopefully someday this will start up an interesting dialogue that could bring about some change! I think more female directors and more work written by women would really push this along nicely.